Sales of netbooks are growing twice as fast as laptops

The strong growth of netbooks helped them capture a 22.2% share of the portable PC market worldwide, up from 5.6% in second quarter of 2008 and from 17.8% in first quarter of 2009. One if five laptops sold is now a netbook.

Sales of netbooks are growing twice as fast as sales of full-size, traditional laptop computers and brands like Acer, HP and Dell are winning shares of the market.

These trends show why Nokia has decided to release their own Nokia Booklet 3G netbook. The netbook market is very competitive but it is also a very fast-growing market.

Lower price – the big advantage of netbooks

The lower price of netbooks compared to the traditional laptops is their big advantage. In the emerging markets, for many first-time computer buyers, netbooks are now the computer of choice. In some Latin American countries and China the penetration of netbooks is higher than the penetration of laptops.

In other countries, the cheap price of netbooks, makes them a good choice for a portable, secondary computer for business and travel.

And with the upcoming release of the netbook optimized, Google Chrome OS, this trend seems to be continuing.

The Nokia netbook features a 10-inch HD-ready screen, weighs 1.25 kilograms (2.75 pounds), it runs Windows 7 and connects to Wi-Fi as well as 3G cellular wireless networks.

The Nokia Booklet 3G has an aluminum case, it is about 2cm thick, powered by an Intel Atom processor and has 12 hours of battery life.

Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution

Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Devices said: “We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal.”

One of the reasons Nokia is going into the crowded netbook market is that the cell phone industry’s sales of handsets are expected to decline 10% this year while netbooks are a growing market and the netbook shipments should double this year.

Detailed specifications about the Nokia Booklet 3G will be released next week at the Nokia World conference in Stuttgart, Germany but it is already set to compete against the upcoming Apple tablet.

Rumors about Apple Tablet device are everywhere last few days. Some say it will be released late this year, some say early 2010. But no one really knows other than few people at Apple.

The ultimate portable web-centric device?

But all in all Apple Tablet promises to be the ultimate device to consume the digital content on the go  through a web-centric operating system. It is set to feature a 9.7-inch touchscreen, will include a camera and a microphone like the iSight on MacBook and MacBook Pro, and will have the anytime and anywhere Internet connection.

The touch-sensitive computer will be the typical netbook size but it would be much thinner and will feature an advanced version of the iPhone OS.

The portable tablet-sized computer will be designed for optimized Internet surfing, e-mail, text documents, music and movies on the go. All in all, optimized for the cloud computing applications that do not involve much data and are mostly run online in the cloud.

Apps, books, newspapers on the go in the cloud

It will also be designed to utilize thousands of the applications from the AppStore. This Apple tablet device might change the way people read books, newspapers and magazines.

The price is expected to be between the cost of an iPhone and the most affordable MacBook. But let us wait and see for the official details before we get more excited about the ultimate cloud computing device.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt has been talking to the financial analysts during the second-quarter 2009 earnings conference call on July 16.

“We do not plan to charge for it, in an open-source form. There may be other ways we can make money from it. If our platform strategy works, and there are many users of Chrome OS, there will be many opportunities to build profitable services on top of the platform. That’s been true for all of the successful platform plays in the history of computing. If it’s not successful, then it won’t really matter.”

Some of the options Google has to monetize Chrome OS are to have ad-supported and subscription-based services for the applications built on the operating system. Already today, major share of Google’s revenue comes from display advertising.

Cloud computing software like Evernote is already using this model and is experimenting with serving ads within the software and has a premium subscription option as a way to make money.

“We do things that are strategic because they get people to use the Internet in a clever way. They will search more, watch more on YouTube, and we know our ads work in a targeted way. We do not require each and every product to be profitable or not profitable”.

“And what they tell us today is that going to the web often means they sacrifice fidelity, functionality and the quality of the content they care about. We knew that if and when we were ever going to bring applications into a web environment, we needed to do the hard work first because we hold such a high bar”

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Microsoft Office takes to the web.

Microsoft has just unveiled the next version of its Office suite of productivity programs, Office 2010, and announced that it will include free, online lightweight versions of its four most popular software programs – Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote.

The suite will be released next year and it is a direct shot at Google’s suite of web-based office applications, Google Docs. This battle and the trend of software going online into a cloud will be interesting to follow in the upcoming months.

The one thing is sure, it is the customer that will win as these companies will do everything they can to improve their products so that the customer ends up using them instead of the competitor.

But what is cloud computing?

• Store files online, access them from everywhere

Instead of storing all your files on a personal computer at home, cloud computing allows you to store these files remotely online, on a server owned by a company like Google. And these files can be accessed from anywhere, at any time on any device you own. Think of Microsoft Outlook vs Google Mail.

• All software online, no need to buy or install

It is not just about the storage. In cloud computing software for word processing, picture editing and more are all available online, so there is no need to buy the product and install it on your computer. It is just there and it works. Think of Microsoft Office vs Google Docs.

• Minimal user interface

The user interface in cloud computing is minimal and it stays out of your way. Most of the user experience takes place on the web. Your data mostly resides on the network, not on your personal computer. You just connect to network services for storage of personal files and for software to run.

• Nothing to backup

Your data is accessible wherever you are and as majority of your data and software you use is located online, you have nothing to back up and nothing to migrate when you buy a new computer. You have nothing to take with you and you have the same user experience from any computer in the world. Just log in from a different machine and there’s all your stuff.

Chrome won’t be available for another year. And we know precious little about it beyond its due date and the fact that it’s designed primarily for netbooks. Nobody really knows at this point what impact, if any, the Chrome OS will have on you, me, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, or anyone else.

But that didn’t stop the bloviation: “Five Reasons Why Microsoft Does Not Need to Worry About Chrome.” “Google’s War on the PC.” “How Will Chrome OS Change Gaming?” “Netbook OS Oddsmaking: Who Will Win the War?”

Posting something, anything at all, about Chrome OS was guaranteed to up your page views this week, so everybody (even Entertainment Weekly) did.

Unfortunately, most of those stories (with a few sensible exceptions) were either redundant or hooey.

via More news not good news | Mac OS X | Editors’ Notes | Macworld.

One of the things journalists / bloggers forget in chase for the page views, is to have a real story. Everyone is just trying to ride a wave and pick up some visitors here and there by just reporting what has already been said.

No one takes time to go to the original source, investigate things, analyze things and put their unique perspective into it. The reader is the loser in the short term, but the website / blog will also lose the credibility by just repeating what has already been said by competitors.

Mashable and likes must do it as otherwise their page views will drop, revenue will go and they will seize existing.

But too many new / upcoming bloggers are just reporting. Somehow they mistake useful and unique content for reporting what bigger bloggers are writing about. Always analyze information, go to the original source of the story and see if you can find unique angle, add your opinion to the story…

TheChromeCloud blog will focus on providing all the latest information on the new Web OS, also knows as Cloud Computing, trend. All the news, all the announcements, all the reviews, all the tips, all the tutorial you can imaging to make you more your operative system more web-centric and to improve your productivity.

Read the original Google announcement about the Google Chrome OS